#1142495 fontforge: please make the build reproducible

#1142495#5
Date:
2026-07-20 17:44:38 UTC
From:
To:
Hi,

Whilst working on the Reproducible Builds effort [0], we noticed that
fontforge generates .afm and .pfb files that are unreproducible.

Specifically, whilst they use SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH for the timestamps,
they still vary on the timezone due to the use of ctime(3).

Patch attached, which at least causes packages such as t1-teams to be
reproducible.

However, there are many other ctime callsites in the codebase that might
require upstream to investigate: some of them are for ~diagnostic output
for human consumption, so likely should specify the timezone explicitly,
whatever it is.

(Alternatively, another method could be added to gutils/gutils.c alongside
GetTime that will return asctime(gmtime(arg)) if SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH is present,
otherwise return cmtime(arg), and then callsites could use this one.)

  [0] https://reproducible-builds.org/


Regards,